Run for the hills!

May 11, 2004 7:11 PM

Will humanity come together to overcome our space enemies?Or is this a publicity stunt for Signs 2:Electric Boogaloo? Or is it nothing at all? Still, what the heck is Mexico doing telling everyone about this? I mean seriously now:

“Hundreds of videos (of UFOs) exist, but none had the backing of the armed forces of any country.... The armed forces don't perpetuate frauds.” Mr. Maussan said Secretary of Defence Gen. Ricardo Vega Garcia gave him the video April 22.
posted by loquax (40 comments total)

Tell Rumsfeld to stop it with the stealth fighters already.
posted by skallas at 7:32 PM on May 11, 2004

Or are we going to believe in crazy conspiracies and wait 37 years for the truth?
posted by skallas at 7:33 PM on May 11, 2004

Will humanity come together ...?

No.
posted by homunculus at 8:08 PM on May 11, 2004

It's the mothership, she's sending out scouts to look for me. Yay! Sheesh, you'd think that after travelling millions of light years to get to this puny planet, that they'd get a map or something so they'd know which was Mexico and which was Texas...I'm just saying.
posted by dejah420 at 8:31 PM on May 11, 2004

dejah420 - Maybe they prefer Mexico.

It would be nice if they'd just issue a few ultimatums : "Cut out the war crap. Destroy your weapons. Take care of the poor, the sick, and the elderly. Brush your teeth. Stop cutting down rainforests. Don't eat at McDonald's" - that sort of thing.

Then - just as in the movies - humanity would be compelled to unite to destroy them.
posted by troutfishing at 8:53 PM on May 11, 2004

Wouldn't running to the hills get us closer to these UFOs?
posted by trondant at 8:59 PM on May 11, 2004

Sorry, my bad. It was me. My friends and I were racing our flying saucers over the Mexican desert. We were bored with our usual pranks of buzzing itinerant farmers and alcoholics along with the rest of the unbelievable. Even leaving behind a few crop circles couldn't cure our state of ennui. Of course the saucers don't make the crop circles. We do that by hand with mundane tools like boards, lengths of rope and even laser surveying equipment. The saucers do however make for a very hasty get away.

We started drinking. Heavily. We really shouldn't have stopped at that last whiskey joint, especially not after sampling the hallucigenic qualities of the local cacti. It clouded our judgement. We figured that the agave in the tequila would cancel out the effects of the peyote. Fortunately the advanced autopilot systems in our saucers calibrated (or maybe decalibrated) out the effects of our cactus based V8 cocktail and restored precision to our rather jittery fine motor skills.

Anyway, we ended up performing acrobatics around the Mexican air force. Despite any fear that may have taken hold of these fine airmen they were in no danger. If our autopilots were installed in all Lincoln Town Cars the number of fatalities at outdoor Farmer's Markets would drop to nothing.

As we sobered up we realized that we made a major faux pas and quickly headed to my Atlantean lair beneath the Antarctic ice caps.
posted by substrate at 9:03 PM on May 11, 2004

Wow, Cool. It would be even cooler if other countries followed suit, Now that mexico has come out of the closet, so to speak.

Not that I'm a UFO nut or anything, but it's plainly obvious that something is going on there. It's shocking the stigma associated with a belief in UFO's, especially when you consider how wide spread sightings are.

It's odd that the aircraft was surrounded by them after having pursued one of them. It's almost as if they wanted to make sure they got a good look at them.

I'm ignoring the possibility of it being fake. I guess either it's Americans playing around with some new stealth technology, or they are visitors from another planet, or some sort of advanced earth civilization existing under our noses. Which may seem unlikely, I guess, but have you ever seen a butterfly sheltering itself from the rain? Me neither. They seem to just disappear :)

Having said all that, it's probably just American pilots fooling around. "Hey, guys, let's fuck with the mexicans! Go on!"
posted by Dillonlikescookies at 9:23 PM on May 11, 2004

I think you might want to take a look at some of the links on the rense.com home page... this guy seems to specialize in conspiracy theories of all variety.

I'm just sayin'...
posted by clevershark at 9:49 PM on May 11, 2004

Yeah, rense is nuts but they had the best description. The story is on reuters and the AP wire too. I don't ever remember something like this actually making the "news". And the Mexican government is crazy. Or maybe they're all chuckling while smoking big fat cigars. I'd totally give credence to wacko news stories if I were a government official.
posted by loquax at 10:02 PM on May 11, 2004

It's shocking the stigma associated with a belief in UFO's, especially when you consider how wide spread sightings are.

I believe in flying objects which are unidentified. These undoubtedly exist. If you believe they are alien craft, then you don't believe in UFOs -- they have, to your mind, been identified. That's where the stigma lies, since no such thing has happened.
posted by kindall at 10:10 PM on May 11, 2004

See, even if this is unexplained, aliens still seems like a less likely explanation. Glowing unmanned drones controlled by a secretive Texan mad scientist would be a more likely explanation. If this is as valid as it seems, which it's probably not, I'm willing to accept that this needs a radical explanation, even one that doesn't currently fit into our current understanding of technology, natural phenomena, etc. but aliens seems near the bottom of the list, really.
posted by abcde at 10:49 PM on May 11, 2004

The kinda-sphericality and brightnes (though it is infrared...) remind me of ball lightning. Ball lightning tends to exhibit weirdly intelligent behavior like chasing things or darting out of the way, and we don't know for sure if the way they "surrounded" the plane has been played up a bit - since surrounding is the only behavior listed that would really require intelligence.
posted by abcde at 10:53 PM on May 11, 2004

Argh. Damnit, now I have to wait 10 years for the next bus to the Pleiades transportation center.

I swear the time tables said Mojave not Mexico.

/me twiddles Thumb impatiently...
posted by loquacious at 11:15 PM on May 11, 2004

It's shocking the stigma associated with a belief in UFO's

I wouldn't call it shocking... appropriate is the word I would use.

have you ever seen a butterfly sheltering itself from the rain?

You had me going there... good one.
posted by wfrgms at 11:24 PM on May 11, 2004

A google news search turned up this article: "[Ivan Semeniuk of the Discovery Channel] said the images aren't that different from the debris of the Mir spacecraft returning to earth." Hmm.
posted by josephtate at 12:02 AM on May 12, 2004

A butterfly sheltering itself from the rain
posted by milov at 1:29 AM on May 12, 2004

loquacious: I find it highly doubtful that you haven't already been somehow involved with the Pleiadians in the Mojave.
posted by snarfodox at 1:33 AM on May 12, 2004

drats! loquax good post, I was just about to make it too. ;)
Though I keep reading the rense headline: "Mexican doodz acknowledge UFOs in Mexico" as I haven't had my morning java yet...
posted by dabitch at 1:44 AM on May 12, 2004

I believe in flying objects which are unidentified. These undoubtedly exist. If you believe they are alien craft, then you don't believe in UFOs -- they have, to your mind, been identified. That's where the stigma lies, since no such thing has happened.

Precisely. "I want to believe" is an insufficient basis for belief.
posted by rushmc at 8:59 AM on May 12, 2004

Reminds me of The Hunt For Zero Point

"There is no way to know exactly what that money is being spent on, but Nick Cook has some ideas. For fifteen years Cook has been a defense and aerospace reporter for Jane's Defence Weekly, which some consider the bible of the international defense community. During his career Cook has often brushed up against the "black world" and has even delved into it, both in reporting for Jane's on advances like the B-2 bomber, and in working on a documentary, Billion Dollar Secret, that probed the U.S. military's classified (or black) weapons programs.
This last project was something of a prelude to Cook's new book, The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology, which documents his ten-year search for a mythical technology that all the brightest minds in aerospace were gushing about in the early 1950s. Strangely, just a few years later the aerospace world was suddenly silent on the subject."

Of course, that "strange silence" could indicate a total flop. Still.....

There was a sighting, over Mexico city by millions of people, of a spectacular UFO display a couple of years ago.

It was widely reported and then promptly forgotten.

Then, there's the Nazi-UFO connection. The 3rd Reich was certainly building some bizarre looking planes, and the US was certainly very eager to grab the prototypes and the scientists and engineers who were building them.

Woo Woo!
posted by troutfishing at 9:03 AM on May 12, 2004

"I want to believe" is an insufficient basis for belief.

...unless their flying machines use an advanced, faith-based technology.
posted by trondant at 9:07 AM on May 12, 2004

Troutfishing: Cool.
posted by loquax at 9:25 AM on May 12, 2004

loquax - beware, that one's a bottomless pit! It merges seamlessly into Area 51, Nazi Scientists and Operation Paperclip, Tesla-related legends and rumours, the strange case of Viktor Schauberger..... on and on and on. It's really endless.

Best taken in small doses - as with rich deserts, cigars, alcohol, or recreational drugs.
posted by troutfishing at 9:47 AM on May 12, 2004

Oh I know. My personal favourite is that Canada built the Avro Arrow based on found UFO technology, and that the US made us cut it out.
posted by loquax at 10:04 AM on May 12, 2004

Once again I would just like to ask: If aliens have the knowhow to bend or break the laws of physics as we understand them (both in traveling FTL and having little spaceships that can make 90 degree turns at many times mach) and they wanted to travel the wastes of interstellar space, why would they come to our backwater planet and why once they got here would they just want to fuck with a bunch of hicks by hitting them with the prostate tickler and fuck with a bunch of credulous goofs by making the atmospherical equivilant of a Pink Floyd laser light show and finally to neatly cut the rectums out of some cows (what is the whole alien assplay thing anyway?)?

So the only two possible answers according to my irrefutable logic are:
A) Ain't no aliens, it's something else.
2) Aliens are incredibly powerful, advanced creatures who also happen to be senseless assholes.

I want to believe in 2) but I gots to believe in A).

However if I end up being right about 2) I can add a corollary to Clark's law:
"Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Thus D. Wino's Law:
"Any significantly advanced technology is going to look freaky to those at the other end of it and will tend to cause it's users to behave like assholes."
posted by Divine_Wino at 10:12 AM on May 12, 2004

My experience with the fine Mexican culture suggests that this is what happened: the air force couldn't be bothered to investigate what they saw, and the government decided that if they just let the whole matter remain ambiguous, it might draw tourists.
posted by bingo at 10:15 AM on May 12, 2004

That link also explains where the term 'Foo Fighters' comes from, trout.
posted by dash_slot- at 10:18 AM on May 12, 2004

BBC report on the UFOs.
posted by mcgraw at 10:34 AM on May 12, 2004

loquax - I'd never heard of the "Avro Arrow". I like the sound of it : "You can't do that ! - It's OUR UFO technology !"

Aliens ? Not aliens ? -

A) It's "not aliens", and...
B) It's also incredibly powerful, advanced creatures who also happen to be senseless assholes.
C) Who the hell knows that it's only 2 expanations ? Why not six, twelve, or fifty ? Convergent phenomenon, anyone ?
D) Profit !
posted by troutfishing at 10:53 AM on May 12, 2004

substrate, funny, funny stuff. :)

dejah420 - Maybe they prefer Mexico.

Well, be that as it may...they should still tell me when they're coming. How else I'm I supposed to pack? I understand that landing a large spaceship in a Dallas suburb can be tricky...but it's not impossible, I've seen the size of the SUV's out here...

"I want to believe" is an insufficient basis for belief.

Whoo boy...tell that to the god freaks...who have no more basis for belief in the invisible sky guy than the ufologists have for belief in intelligent life off-planet.
posted by dejah420 at 11:03 AM on May 12, 2004

>Divine_Wino

I think, but I could have the author wrong that Harlan Ellison made a quote quite similar to your prostate tickling...

I tend to agree, unless of course FTL travel is sooo cheap that any alien yahoo can do it, and we are simply seeing some drunk, rowdy teenagers trolling the yokels...
posted by jkaczor at 11:59 AM on May 12, 2004

The thing that strikes me about most sightings is that they all starting apprearing after the first major boon in aviation (particularly the militarization thereof). Let's see a headline from a circa 1870 London newspaper wondering about those speeding discs of fire in the sky. Best the ufologist can come up with is: They weren't interested in us until after WWII.

meh ...
posted by RavinDave at 5:14 PM on May 12, 2004

There is stigma associated with just an acknowledgement of the existence of ufo's, never mind whether you believe they are "alien" or not. people have become so anti-conspiracy theory, possible due to government influence, (propaganda is so often invisible) that they discredit the actual sightings themselves, rather than discuss what they could be.

It seems plainly obvious to me that all the typical "ball-lightning" "mass hysteria" etc excuses do not even come close to being enough to explain all the sightings. People may claim "I want to believe" but so often people are more likely to accept that millions of people have been fooled, deceived, countless times again and again by natural phenomenon, actually unnaturally, in very unnatural circumstances.

I won't side myself with conspiracy theorists, but I won't side myself with their counterparts either. I think we could agree that there is definitely, and has for some time been something going on which can not be accounted for by much else than either certain governments having access to some incredibly advanced technology, or a certain degree of presence by another civilization.

If you look at the media, computer games, etc, the whole "alien" theme runs through our society. It's a common conflict of belief, one that many people have strong opinions on, but is rarely discussed and certainly hampered by many things.

The fact of the matter is that we don't know. But I will not accept a belief that everything has been either a hoax or a misperception. It's astounding someone could have that much faith in our knowledge. We are a pretty crappy civilization.

In regards to butterflies, I think my point stands. Now I have seen a photo of a butterfly hiding on the internet. I have seen photos of many things on the internet. Thousands of UFO photos, ignored, but one photo of a butterfly? Not to sound overly-critical, but I am, and although I don't know what's going on, saying "nothing" would be a huge denial, a (negative) leap of faith.
posted by Dillonlikescookies at 10:44 PM on May 12, 2004

*actually = acting. dammit.
posted by Dillonlikescookies at 10:45 PM on May 12, 2004

RavinDave: A quick google search found a bunch of interesting stuff that was before the age of flight.

Paintings from the 17th century & earlier depicting flying saucers

And let's not forget the bible...
"2 Kings 2:11 'And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.'"
posted by SpecialK at 2:26 AM on May 13, 2004

(By the way, the link is admittedly a fringe/crackpot source, but if you image-google the paintings, the images haven't been doctored.)
posted by SpecialK at 2:28 AM on May 13, 2004

it's only infared tho. So ball lightning anybody? no? that wouldn't be "seen" per se in daylight, but would irradiate some heat...
posted by eljuanbobo at 1:47 PM on May 13, 2004

SpecialK, thanks for those!

Also don't forget the Nazca Lines and other South American portrayals of spaceships and aliens that were carved thousands of years ago.
posted by dejah420 at 4:54 PM on May 13, 2004

It was widely reported and then promptly forgotten.

You have just described the modern condition.

Whoo boy...tell that to the god freaks...

I do, with some regularity. Are you new around here? ;)
posted by rushmc at 3:29 PM on May 14, 2004